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Research Bulletin

Phi Delta Kappa Center for Evaluation, Development, and Research
May 2001, No. 29

Negotiating a Critical Literacy Curriculum with Young Children
by Vivian Vasquez

Curriculum can and should be a learner's opportunity to envision the possible. It should serve as a metaphor for the lives learners want to live and the people they want to be.1 This means that we need to be able to support learners to imagine other ways of being in the world.2 This view of curriculum has important implications for classroom teachers and their practice.

In order to understand how best to support learners to be the people they want to be, teachers need to re-examine existing curricular practices. Through this re-examination, teachers need to think about the kinds of literacies that are being constructed through their practices and whether those literacies are of the kind that would help learners envision possibilities in life.

During the 1996-1997 school year, I engaged in a teacher research study to explore how different literacies are constructed through different practices, looking specifically at what happens when critical literacy is used as a theoretical tool to frame curriculum. My position was that critical literacy generates learning opportunities to explore problems associated with inequitable social practices and to attend to issues of difference and diversity. My intent was to learn about how literacy was constructed through my own teaching practice, as well as to determine what literacies were constructed. In doing so, I hoped to discover how different meanings are negotiated through changing constructions of literacy practice and how this changing construction of practice can support learners to uncover how social practices privilege some systems of meaning over others.

ABOUT THE STUDY

The study took place in a classroom of 16 children who were three and four years old at the beginning of the school year and four and five years old by the end of the school year. Data included artifacts of student work, such as writing samples, drawings, and other materials representing incidents that were highlighted in the curriculum, along with transcripts of informal conversations, field notes, and journal entries. The greatest portion of the data was gathered on a public "audit trail" that represented critical conversations in the classroom used to negotiate the curriculum. It is the construction of an audit trail as a tool for negotiating curriculum and as a site for data production that I will focus on in this Research Bulletin.

To analyze the data, I revisited field notes and observations. I then identified key incidents that were catalysts for examining classroom practice. From there, I highlighted patterns and anomalies in order to identify issues, themes, and ideas.

Through analysis of the data, I addressed the following key questions:

• What can be learned from a classroom where cultural and social issues raised by children are taken up as curriculum?
• How are social critique, social analysis, and social action used to construct literacy?
• What complexities are involved with engaging in critical literacy practice?
• How are different meanings negotiated through changing constructions of literacy practice?

THEORETICAL TOOLKIT

Throughout data analysis I made use of a number of theoretical tools. I began with a social constructivist view to support my discussion about envisioning literacy from a critical literacy perspective. What this afforded me was a space to "recognize that we use a multiplicity of literacies to get things done in our lives."3 Further, through this perspective, learning is not seen as a linear transformation of mental structures. Rather, learning is viewed as mediated through social and cultural activities dealing with "situated changes in sociocognitive actions in children's ways of participating" in the world.4 Sociocultural theory, therefore, highlighted social relationships in the research classroom. What this theory did not reveal is the hierarchy of social relationships. For this, I assumed a poststructuralist perspective through the work of Michel Foucault. From this perspective, the self is situated within discourse communities that carry different forms of power, sometimes complementing one another, at other times conflicting with one another. However, as Anne Haas Dyson notes, the self can easily be lost within what has come to be known in the poststructuralist world as a discourse grid, that is, a grid of identities of who one can and cannot be and what one can and cannot do in particular communities.5

In Bakhtin's view, the self is situated in an interactional and ideological world.6 Within this world, the self is actualized through the construction of dialogic relationships. While engaged in these dialogic relationships, we borrow each other's words, using them to inform and push our own thinking and learning. According to Bakhtin, these relationships are mediated by language as we engage with texts, whether oral, written, or some other form. It is through the building of these dialogic human relationships that we learn to participate in community.

In combination, these theoretical tools situate literacy away from a traditional skill and practice model that positions it as an internal, psychological act, toward a view of literacy as social and cultural practice.

Work in the field of critical literacy in practice provided me with an overarching frame of reference for analyzing the data and gaining insight into negotiating and constructing critical literacies with young children.7 I also relied on Allan Luke and Peter Freebody's Four Resources Model and Andrew Manning's Framework for Instructional Practice.8, 9

Luke and Freebody's Four Resources Model presents possible practices that children learn in schools that differentially shape reading and writing as social practices, depending on which teaching and learning practices are emphasized. From this perspective, what we do with reading and writing and what reading and writing do to us constitute social practices.10 These different teaching practices construct different literacies as follow:

• practices that allow learners to break the code of texts;
• practices that allow learners to participate in the meanings of texts;
• practices that allow learners to use texts functionally; and
• practices that allow learners to critically analyze and transform texts.

In his Framework for Instructional Practice, Manning defines four particular literacies: functional literacy, cultural literacy, progressive literacy, and critical literacy.11 He constructed the framework as a context for talking about and understanding curricular practice. Manning differentiates the four literacies by how literacy is defined (literacy as . . .), the ideology behind each form of literacy, what a particular form of literacy looks like from a curricular perspective, and what this means in terms of instruction or pedagogy.

The work of Luke and Freebody, as well as Manning, helped me situate my teaching practice within the context of both traditional and progressive pedagogies.

DEFINING CRITICAL LITERACY

Colin Lankshear writes that being critical is currently in vogue.12 Barbara Comber notes that critical literacy has been "conference, curriculum, policy and journal currency for some time now."13 As critical literacy gains momentum in the field of education, different definitions are attached to it, often describing what critical literacy does. For example, Allan Luke talks about challenging texts -- making visible selective versions of the world that are told to change conditions of living.14 Ira Shor talks about critical literacy as analytical thinking, reading, writing, speaking, or discussing.15 Patrick Shannon claims that critical literacy content ought to stem from participants' lives and that the process should involve questions that stem from participants' lives as a springboard for dialogue.16 Anne Simpson talks about helping children to become conscious of how texts act upon them.17

There exists a growing body of critical literacy demonstrations of practice with older students. However, there is very little written by preschool or elementary teachers about exploring critical literacy with their students. Those demonstrations that do exist take the form of isolated incidents where students are not involved in negotiating or constructing curriculum. Thus I proposed to illustrate what critical literacy allowed my students and me to do differently and to demonstrate the central role that critical literacy plays in shaping literacies constructed through classroom practice. As a result, I hoped to open up spaces in which to rethink curriculum as a metaphor for the lives learners want to live and the people they want to be.

For the purposes of my research, I made use of Barbara Comber's definition of critical literacy as opportunities to consider what we do with reading and writing and what reading and writing do to us.18

CREATING AN AUDIT TRAIL

The idea for an audit trail as a tool for representing incidents of critical literacy came from observations of early childhood classrooms, where teachers post artifacts of student learning, such as photographs and artwork, on the walls. This is different from using bulletin board spaces, because these artifacts remain posted for long periods of time as a way to revisit and record learning, not only for teachers and students but also for parents and other visitors.

An audit trail is a collection of notes and artifacts that helps the researcher retrace thinking.19 In my classroom, my students and I studied language and language use as we explored ways of using forms of language, such as writing, in powerful ways. By the end of the school year, our audit trail consisted of more than 100 artifacts -- photographs, writings, written conversations, transcripts of conversations, quotable quotes, drawings, newspaper clippings. Each stood for an instance of critical literacy that took place in our classroom. In combination, the instances represented our negotiated curriculum.

The audit trail was visible throughout our classroom, which made it very easy to revisit and reflect on posted artifacts. Reflecting on past learning experiences helped my students and me make decisions about what issues or topics to take up in our classroom.

A CLOSER LOOK AT OUR AUDIT TRAIL: HOW WE GOT STARTED

On the first day of school, I decided to read Quick as a Cricket, by Don and Audrey Wood, because the predictable text would make it possible for the children to read with me. While reading, the children paused and began to raise questions about one particular illustration of an amphibian. One of the children asked, "Is that a frog or a toad?" This question led to research about where frogs and toads live. The children discovered that some frogs and toads live in rainforests. They also discovered that some frogs and toads are in danger of extinction because of the clearing of certain rainforests for various reasons, including urban expansion. Their discovery led to inquiries about the rainforest and ways of taking action to save rainforests and endangered animals, which marked the beginning of a curriculum about social justice, equity, and environmental issues that lasted throughout the school year. The first artifacts were chosen to represent these initial inquiries (see Figure 1).

FIGURE 1 Artifacts representing conversations and inquiry into rainforests include a book jacket, the illustration that led to the question, "Is that a frog or a toad?" the question itself, and a book jacket for one of the resource books the children read about the rainforest.

Other sections of our audit trail represented various instances of learning whereby my students and I engaged in critical analysis of text, constructing alternative versions of text or engaging in social action. The following section focuses on a particular project represented on our audit trail.

Women And Girls Are Strong Too

One day a flyer arrived at our school announcing a contest for International Women's Day. The contest involved creating a bookmark and slogan that represented women. (Interest in women's rights and gender had been sustained from earlier conversations during our exploration into environmental issues and rainforests.) A group of four girls wanted to know more about the contest, so we put in a call to the organizers. We discovered that the contest had been going on for a number of years; but younger students had not heard about it, and only older students entered the contest. This discovery generated a discussion regarding ways in which kindergarten students, especially junior kindergarten students, are marginalized and left out of school events. The group of four girls further discussed entering the contest, and two of the girls designed a bookmark to submit (see Figure 2).

FIGURE 2 These artifacts represent the International Women's Day Bookmark Contest project. The artifacts include the flyer announcing the contest, along with the slogan the girls developed, "Women and Girls are Strong Too!" and the accompanying drawings.

During the next few weeks, the class eagerly awaited the results of the contest. At the end of three weeks, an envelope arrived addressed to our class. Angela and Maria, who had submitted the entry on our behalf, opened the envelope. They had won.

In a letter attached to the winner's certificate, the organizers of the event revealed that they were caught off guard by the entry from a junior kindergarten class and at first were not sure what to do. They decided to give two awards, one for younger primary school children and the other for older primary school children.

During the next school assembly, Angela and Maria accepted the award of recognition on behalf of our class. This was one of several events that eventually resulted in the inclusion of junior kindergarten students in more school activities. This also encouraged the school PTA to take up our cause and fight for the right of junior kindergarten students to have equal access to school events and functions.

DISCUSSION

In the classroom I shared with my junior kindergarten students, literacy was predominantly seen as social transformation, where issues raised were acted upon to effect change. In our immediate community, junior kindergarten students were given more and more access to school events; beyond our immediate community, the children began to raise similar issues of equity and social justice in their homes. This was evident as we engaged in projects such as the International Women's Day contest. Instructional pedagogy was rooted in questioning, contesting, and offering different perspectives in order to change inequitable or unjust situations. Spaces were created to question, contest, and interrogate social texts throughout the school day in class meetings, in small-group conversations, and in different areas of the classroom. Issues of social justice and equity were highlighted throughout the school year. These issues were used to negotiate and sustain the curriculum, as well as to generate other possible curricular engagements.

As I became more experienced in engaging in critical literacies, I became better at constructing a curriculum based on the social justice and equity issues raised by my students' life texts - stories they brought into the classroom. I became more comfortable negotiating the curriculum with children and constructing a curriculum with them.

According to Luke and Freebody, literacy should be a "moral, political, and cultural decision about the kind of literate practices that are needed to enhance people's agency over their life trajectories."20 When curriculum is negotiated using the social worlds of children, learning is sustained and generative. The generative quality comes from giving children opportunities to connect their current understandings with other issues that arise or with the stories of their peers. The negotiation of curriculum is not new, especially to progressive educators, such as whole language practitioners. What is different is the use of social justice and equity issues framed from a critical literacy perspective that leads to various forms of social action. Through this study, I became witness to the possibilities for very young children to effect change.

ENDNOTES

1. Jerome Harste, "Curriculum as Audit Trail" (paper presented at the annual convention of the National Council of Teachers of English, Detroit, Mich., November 1997).

2. Haas Dyson, "Writing Children: Reinventing the Development of Childhood Literacy," Written Communication 12, no. 1 (1995): 4-46.

3. Barbara Comber and Phil Cormack, "Looking Beyond 'Skills' and 'Processes': Literacy as Social and Cultural Practices in Classrooms," UKRA Reading (November 1997): 22-29.

4. Dyson, "Writing Children," 7.

5. Ibid, 8.

6. Mikhail Bakhtin, "Discourse in the Novel," in The Dialogic Imagination: Four Essays by M. Bakhtin, edited by Caryl Emerson and Michael Holquist (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1981), 259-422.

7. Barbara Comber, "Classroom Explorations in Critical Literacy," Australian Journal of Language and Literacy 16, no. 1 (1993): 73-83; Bronwyn Davies, Shards of Glass (NSW Australia: Allen and Unwin Pty Ltd, 1993); Lisa Burley Maras and Bill Brummet, "Time for Change: Presidential Elections in a Grade 3-4 Multi-age Classroom," in Endless Possibilities: Generating Curriculum in Social Studies and Literacy, edited by Pat Cordeiro (Portsmouth, N.H.: Heinemann, 1995), 89-104; Wendy Morgan, Critical Literacy in the Classroom (London: Routledge, 1997); Barbara Comber and Barbara Kamler, "Critical Literacies: Politicizing the Language Classroom," Interpretations 30, no.1 (1997): 30-53.

8. Allan Luke and Peter Freebody, "Further Notes on the Four Resources Model," Practically Primary 4, no. 2 (1999).

9. Andrew Manning, "Frameworks for Locating Practice" (chart presented at the MSVU Open Learning Course, Mississauga, Ontario, Canada, 1999).

10. Barbara Comber, "Literacy, Poverty, and Schooling: Working Against Deficit Equations," English in Australia 119, no. 20 (1997): 22-34.

11. Manning, "Frameworks."

12. Colin Lankshear, Changing Literacies (Buckingham, England: Open University Press, 1997).

13. Comber, "Literacy, Poverty, and Schooling," 22.

14. Allan Luke, Social Construction of Literacy in the Classroom (Melbourne: MacMillan, 1994).

15. Ira Shore, Empowering Education: Critical Teaching for Social Change (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1992).

16. Patrick Shannon, Text, Lies and Videotape: Stories about Life, Literacy, and Learning (Portsmouth, N.H.: Heinemann, 1995).

17. Anne Simpson, "Critical Questions: Whose Questions?" Reading Teacher 50, no. 2 (1996): 118-27.

18. Comber, "Literacy, Poverty, and Schooling."

19. Jerome Harste and Vivian Vasquez, "The Work That We Do: Curriculum as Audit Trail," Language Arts 75, no. 4 (1998): 266-76.

20. Luke and Freebody, "Further Notes," 2.